You may first notice small bald patches at the back of your child’s head. Perhaps a row of red marks along their arm, raw cuticles from constant picking, or eyelashes that seem to have thinned without explanation. When you gently ask, you’re told, “I didn’t even know I was doing it.”

Body-focused repetitive behaviours, or BFRBs, are often mistaken for bad habits, boredom, or tics. Many parents spend years wondering why their child pulls their hair, picks at their skin, or bites their nails well beyond the age they expected these behaviours to stop. Many teens and young adults live with deep, quiet shame about behaviours they can’t quite explain or control.

This blog is for parents, carers, and young people who’ve noticed something that doesn’t fit the “bad habit” explanation. We’ll walk through what BFRBs really are, what keeps them going, and the kinds of approaches that actually help.

Something we hear regularly from the young people we work with is how different they feel around animals. A teenager who can barely make eye contact in session will light up telling me about their dog at home. A child who struggles to name a single emotion can describe exactly how their cat makes them feel safe. Time and again, animals come up in therapy as the one relationship that feels easy.

OCD after birth is far more common than most people realise. It is also one of the most misunderstood and mislabelled mental health presentations in the perinatal period. Many parents who develop OCD after having a baby spend months, and sometimes years, believing that something is wrong with them as a person, that they are a danger to their child, or that they are failing at parenthood.

Never before have so many people had access to information about mental health. Therapy language is everywhere. Terms like trauma, boundaries, triggers, gaslighting, attachment style, nervous system regulation, and self care are now part of everyday conversation. On the surface, this seems like progress. People are more aware. Stigma has reduced. Conversations that were once hidden are now public. And yet, in my work as a clinical psychologist, I am seeing more people who are confused, overwhelmed, and discouraged by what they think therapy is supposed to look like.

f you’ve ever found yourself saying, “Just do it please” for the fifth time in ten minutes… you’re not alone.

And if your child has responded with “I will!” while continuing to do absolutely nothing… also not alone.

This is one of those everyday parenting dilemmas that seems small on the surface — homework, chores, getting ready, practising skills, but can quickly turn into a pattern of frustration, nagging, and everyone feeling a bit stuck.

Underneath it, there’s a bigger tension that a lot of parents sit with:

Do I push them to do things… or do I wait for them to want to?

If you or someone you love is struggling with an eating disorder, one of the first things worth knowing is this: no single professional can do it all. Eating disorders are complex. They live in the body and the mind, and recovering from one asks for support on both fronts. That's where the care team approach comes in and understanding how it works can make the journey feel a lot less overwhelming.